Tensions are higher between India and Pakistan than they have been in decades as the two countries trade blame for drone attacks on each other’s territory over the past few days. At the heart of the dispute is what India claims is Pakistan’s support for armed separatist groups operating in Kashmir, a region disputed between the two countries.
An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month in which 26 people were killed. India alleges that TRF is an offshoot of another Pakistan-based armed group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and has blamed Pakistan for supporting such groups.
Pakistan has denied this. It condemned the attack in April and called for an independent investigation.
Here is more about who the armed groups are and the major attacks they’ve claimed or been blamed for.
The TRF emerged in 2019 following the Indian government’s suspension of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, stripping Indian-administered Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status.
However, the group was not widely known before the Pahalgam attack, which it took responsibility for in April via the Telegram messaging app, on which it said it was opposed to the granting of residency permits to “outsiders”.
Since the repeal of Article 370, non-Kashmiris have been granted residency permits to settle in Indian-administered Kashmir. This has stoked fears that the Indian government is trying to change the demographics of Kashmir, whose population is nearly all Muslim.
Unlike other armed rebel groups in Kashmir, the TRF does not have an Islamic name.
However, the Indian government maintains that it is an offshoot of, or a front for, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based armed group whose name means “Army of the Pure”.
In 2020, TRF started claiming responsibility for minor attacks, including some targeted killings. TRF recruits included rebels from different splinter rebel groups. Indian security agents say they have arrested multiple TRF members since then.
According to Indian government records, most armed fighters killed in gunfights in Kashmir were affiliated with the TRF in 2022.
The LeT, which calls for the “liberation” of Indian-administered Kashmir, was founded around 1990 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who is also known as Hafiz Saeed.
In 2008, armed gunmen opened fire on civilians at several sites in Mumbai, India, killing 166 people. Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker captured alive, said the attackers were members of LeT. Saeed denied any involvement in that attack, however. Kasab was executed by India in 2012.
India also blamed Pakistani intelligence agencies for the attack. While Pakistan conceded that the attack may have been partly planned on Pakistani soil, it maintained that its government and intelligence agencies were not involved.
According to the United Nations, LeT was also involved in a 2001 attack on India’s parliament and a 2006 attack on Mumbai commuter trains that killed 189 people.
On May 7, India launched missile attacks on several cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. One of these cities was Muridke in the Punjab province. India claims that Muridke was the location of the headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawa, a charity organisation that New Delhi insists is a front for the LeT.
Last week, the Indian army claimed it had struck LeT’s Markaz Taiba camp in Muridke. The army also claimed Kasab had been trained at this camp.
Pakistan says LeT has been banned, however. Following an attack on Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pulwama in 2019, Pakistan also reimposed a lapsed ban on Jamat-ud-Dawa. Saeed was arrested in 2019 and is in the custody of the Pakistani government, serving a 31-year prison sentence after being convicted in two “terror financing” cases.
Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), or “The Army of Muhammad”, was formed around 2000 by Masood Azhar, who had been released from Indian prison in 1999.
Azhar, who had been arrested on “terrorism” charges, was released in exchange for 155 hostages being held by hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane.
Azhar previously fought under the banner of a group called Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which calls for Kashmir to be united with Pakistan, and has been linked to al-Qaeda.
According to the UN Security Council, JeM has also had links with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Pakistan banned JeM in 2002 after the group, alongside LeT, was blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.
The British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted of killing US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, was also a member of JeM. Pearl was the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief. However, a 2011 report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University following its own investigation claimed that Pearl had not been murdered by Sheikh. The report instead alleged that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, was responsible. In 2021, a panel of three judges at Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered Sheikh’s release.
Despite the ban, Indian authorities claim the group continues to operate in Bahawalpur, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. On May 7, the Indian army claimed its strikes had also targeted the headquarters of JeM there.
In 2019, JeM claimed a suicide bomb attack that killed 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Azhar has been arrested by Pakistani authorities twice, but was released and has never been charged. He has since disappeared from the public eye and his current whereabouts are not known.
Hizbul-ul-Mujahideen
Hizbul-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), or “Party of Holy Fighters” was formed in 1989 by Kashmiri separatist leader Muhammad Ahsan Dar.
The group emerged out of the 1988 protests in Kashmir against the Indian government. The group, also called Hizb, has become the largest Indigenous rebel group based in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Rather than calling for independence, HuM calls for the whole of Kashmir to be allowed to accede to Pakistan.
The group has a huge network of fighters in Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama districts in the south of Indian-administered Kashmir.
In 2016, the killing of popular HuM commander Burhan Wani triggered widespread protests in Indian-administered Kashmir, resulting in a crackdown by Indian security forces.
The following year, the US designated HuM as a “foreign terrorist organisation” and placed sanctions on the group.
HuM leader Riyaz Naikoo spoke to Al Jazeera in 2018. “It is the nature of the occupying Indian state that has compelled us to resort to violent methods of resistance,” he said.
When asked what the group’s demands were, Naikoo said: “Our demand is very simple – freedom. Freedom, for us, means the complete dismantling of India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir and all the structures that support it, be they military or economic.”
